[ubuntu-uk] Social FLOSS?

[TheVeech]

On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 14:17 +0100, Tony Arnold wrote:
> Alan,
> 
> Alan Pope wrote:
> 
> > I have no idea what you're talking about. You are saying that flickr/google 
> > video are proprietary social networking tools that "we" in the open source 
> > community lack?
> 
> I think TheVeech is suggesting the open source community should
> create/manage/run more social networking tools such as flickr etc.
> rather than rely on big companies to do it for us and therefore
> (perhaps) not provide support for Linux etc.

I hadn't thought of that last bit, but, yeah, that too!


> Personally, I think this would be very difficult. A service such as
> Flickr must need huge resources for it to be successful (I mean in terms
> of hardware, the disk space alone must be fairly huge). Such resources
> do not come for free, so it either needs to be done by a company that is
> earning money else where or the service itself has to get an income from
> somewhere.

I've said this before, but I wouldn't mind paying as a way of
contributing to something that's in our interests - I couldn't see it
happening without some contributions - but run like the projects, to
provide the best web-based services we can.  But these are ideas without
purpose, because I wouldn't know where to begin!

BTW, IIRC, Google just uses bog standard Hard Drives.


> To be honest, I don't see the problem with Flickr! It's well supported
> by F-spot. Perhaps rumours of some deal between Yahoo and Micro$oft is
> worrying people.

TBH, I haven't heard of anyone getting heated about this, but I've had
enough of the situation.  All of 'em are just stuck in the food chain.
Flickr gets swallowed up by Yahoo!, Yahoo! is looking to being swallowed
up by MS, Roman Abramovich buys Pluto.


> Regards,
> Tony.
> -- 
> Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
> IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
> T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
> E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold
>